Don't Chuck Your Old Pc's

[PlayStation 10]

as the title says. Just a bit of info for those not clued up on computers.

 

I have a 10 year old Compaq desktop pc. It has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.80Ghz CPU with 2GB of ram as standard and a 500GB HDD. A few years ago the machine was getting seriously slow and was doing my head in as it was barely usable. From pressing the power button to getting to the log on screen it would take over 2mins. Then would take a further minute to open chrome.

 

So i ended up buying a 4GB stick of ram to see if that made it any faster, but it didn't. I also Upgraded it from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it was still slow. So the next step i did was look at a SSD. I bought a 240GB SSD drive for £30 off ebuyer, installed it and put windows back on and the machine is absolutely rapid. It's even faster than it was new. I can go from powering on to opening chrome in just over 30 secs. You just wouldn't believe it was the same machine.

 

So i would definitely look down the SSD route if you have a old slow pc. It could save you a lot of money.

 

Works for laptops too as i upgraded from a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD (or could you say downgraded) on my less than 1 year old slow as hell HP laptop with intel Core i5 and 8GB RAM. 

Edited March 8, 2020 by PlayStation

[fools 447]

A windows reinstall usually gets the boot time to 30seconds, if anyone wants to fix their slow booting machine for nothing.

[PlayStation 10]

3 hours ago, fools said:

A windows reinstall usually gets the boot time to 30seconds, if anyone wants to fix their slow booting machine for nothing.

not on a old knackered machine.

 

neither did it for my less than 1 year old laptop which was slow from new anyway. been told modern laptops with hard drives bigger than 500GB are slow.

[Phil Shaw 10]

8 hours ago, PlayStation said:

as the title says. Just a bit of info for those not clued up on computers.

 

I have a 10 year old Compaq desktop pc. It has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.80Ghz CPU with 2GB of ram as standard and a 500GB HDD. A few years ago the machine was getting seriously slow and was doing my head in as it was barely usable. From pressing the power button to getting to the log on screen it would take over 2mins. Then would take a further minute to open chrome.

 

So i ended up buying a 4GB stick of ram to see if that made it any faster, but it didn't. I also Upgraded it from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and it was still slow. So the next step i did was look at a SSD. I bought a 240GB SSD drive for £30 off ebuyer, installed it and put windows back on and the machine is absolutely rapid. It's even faster than it was new. I can go from powering on to opening chrome in just over 30 secs. You just wouldn't believe it was the same machine.

 

So i would definitely look down the SSD route if you have a old slow pc. It could save you a lot of money.

 

Works for laptops too as i upgraded from a 1TB HDD to a 500GB SSD (or could you say downgraded) on my less than 1 year old slow as hell HP laptop with intel Core i5 and 8GB RAM. 

Hi there,

 

Sounds great but is it easy to install it into a standard laptop? I have a slow Lenovo running on Windows 10...

[fools 447]

2 hours ago, PlayStation said:

not on a old knackered machine.

 

neither did it for my less than 1 year old laptop which was slow from new anyway. been told modern laptops with hard drives bigger than 500GB are slow.

even on old machines, eg W7, 17 yr old machine with tiny amount of ram and processor power compared to your Compaq, cold to desktop takes 32 seconds, (12 of that is bios post).

 

slow boot time (anything over 45 secs) is a software problem, reinstall cures it. SSD improves it some more.

 

Perhaps your 1 year old machine came with pre-installed crud, which you no longer have.

 

--------------------------

 

Phil,

 

It depends on how accessible the hard drive bay is on your machine.

 

some are one screw and a plastic slider away

 

some involve removing bezels, keyboard, touchpad and more - a lot more opportunity for unwanted damage

 

 

Edited March 9, 2020 by fools

[PlayStation 10]

5 hours ago, Phil Shaw said:

Hi there,

 

Sounds great but is it easy to install it into a standard laptop? I have a slow Lenovo running on Windows 10...

If reinstalling windows doesn't make it better then it could benefit from a SSD.

 

That's if there is nothing else at fault.

 

As mentioned above, some laptops have a trap door underneath with one screw to access the HDD. Others require a full strip down.

 

On my laptop i had to remove around 10 screws then pop the bottom of the whole case off.

[PlayStation 10]

4 hours ago, fools said:

even on old machines, eg W7, 17 yr old machine with tiny amount of ram and processor power compared to your Compaq, cold to desktop takes 32 seconds, (12 of that is bios post).

 

slow boot time (anything over 45 secs) is a software problem, reinstall cures it. SSD improves it some more.

 

Perhaps your 1 year old machine came with pre-installed crud, which you no longer have.

 

--------------------------

 

Phil,

 

It depends on how accessible the hard drive bay is on your machine.

 

some are one screw and a plastic slider away

 

some involve removing bezels, keyboard, touchpad and more - a lot more opportunity for unwanted damage

 

 

The desktop i am pretty sure the hard drive was to blame as reinstalling windows did not cure it.

 

On the laptop it got worse as the year went on. Multiple attempts of reinstalling windows didn't make a difference. Not even with a bare copy of W10 direct from the microsoft website cured it. Was told by many that modern laptops and a 1TB HDD don't get on and was advised to swap for a SSD.  Previous to this laptop i tried 2 different laptops of which both suffered from slowing down and both went back to the shop.

 

My friends laptop is exactly the same and they are now considering SSD.

 

I wasn't trying to say upgrading to a SSD is the answer. But simply saying swapping out your HDD on an old tired machine for a SSD will give it a new lease of life.

Edited March 9, 2020 by PlayStation

[zach 234]

With the price of 2.5" SSDs at the moment, it's a must upgrade IMO. It's worth keeping in mind on older systems that the  speed of the SATA ports will also come into play, without doubt it will be faster but still won't give the full speed of the SSD

 

Agreed, a clean install is always better. RAM is usually system dependant and more so on older systems as to how much it will take. If you're on DDR3/4, I say 16GB is a good number. If you're on a newer system and it does a lot of hard work, 32GB upwards.

 

It's good you got the old system back up and running and got rid of the slow drive in your laptop. I'd just buy a cheap 2.5" USB enclosure and use the old 1TB for storage.

 

8 hours ago, Phil Shaw said:

Hi there,

 

Sounds great but is it easy to install it into a standard laptop? I have a slow Lenovo running on Windows 10...

List the model number and we can have a look. I have a Toshiba that has to have the entire bottom taken off, not hard but takes a bit longer.

[PlayStation 10]

10 hours ago, zach said:

With the price of 2.5" SSDs at the moment, it's a must upgrade IMO. It's worth keeping in mind on older systems that the  speed of the SATA ports will also come into play, without doubt it will be faster but still won't give the full speed of the SSD

 

Agreed, a clean install is always better. RAM is usually system dependant and more so on older systems as to how much it will take. If you're on DDR3/4, I say 16GB is a good number. If you're on a newer system and it does a lot of hard work, 32GB upwards.

 

It's good you got the old system back up and running and got rid of the slow drive in your laptop. I'd just buy a cheap 2.5" USB enclosure and use the old 1TB for storage.

 

List the model number and we can have a look. I have a Toshiba that has to have the entire bottom taken off, not hard but takes a bit longer.

Yes, so glad i can use this desktop again. Thinking of using it for emulation.

 

6GB in this desktop seems to be more than plenty. And 8GB in the laptop seems fine too. I tell you what, wish i hadn't paid the £549 for this laptop. For a HP at that price it is mega poor. Feels cheap and plasticy. The touch pad is dreadfull. Mind you all modern laptops now have rubbish touch pads.

 

I can't tell you how many 2.5" drives i have in external cases from ps3's ps4's and xbox's 🤣🤣

Edited March 9, 2020 by PlayStation

[zach 234]

2 hours ago, PlayStation said:

Yes, so glad i can use this desktop again. Thinking of using it for emulation.

 

6GB in this desktop seems to be more than plenty. And 8GB in the laptop seems fine too. I tell you what, wish i hadn't paid the £549 for this laptop. For a HP at that price it is mega poor. Feels cheap and plasticy. The touch pad is dreadfull. Mind you all modern laptops now have rubbish touch pads.

 

I can't tell you how many 2.5" drives i have in external cases from ps3's ps4's and xbox's 🤣🤣

It should be good for emulation, I used to dabble but not used them for a while. I still have all the bits and bobs needed and seemed to remember Dolphin was quite good. I've been replaying all the Splinter Cell series on PS3 and PC. Most of them are from a time when we used to buy a game and get the whole thing, not get charged another £30 for the "extras"

 

When I mentioned RAM it was more the numbers for modern desktops. Both my laptop and my Surface have 8GB and work fine. My main PC is a real work horse so that has 64GB in it. A bit OTT but VMs munch plenty of it. If you find that 6GB does what you need, there's no point in spending on more.

 

[swarfendor437 14]

Well it's not blistering but the machine my good lady uses is 14 years old (Home built MSI Athlon 64+ Maxed out with 2 Gb RAM and 256 Mb AGP card - Put FerenOS and enabled 'familiar layout' (Win10 Start Menu clone closer than any other Linux Win10 wannabe). Her favourite Win7 theme installed, including login sounds that went with the theme. Just had to tweak the Compositor in Advanced settings. Better than Win 7 overall for appearance and responsiveness. On a family member's PC installed FerenOS on that and running Windows 7 Pro 64-bit as a VM inside of FerenOS is running better under 4Gb VM than on full 8Gb! Now all that is needed is to backup the totally updated Windows 7 VM should anything untoward happen then just drag back the VM virtual hard disk image from external storage - lot simpler to install than starting from even a backup image of the 'real thing'. 😉

FerenOS picked up the Solar Powered Logitech K750 and also reports on status of keyboard battery. Same on wireless keyboard and mouse on family member's PC.

Edited March 10, 2020 by swarfendor437